John and Ethel O’Brien will celebrate 70 years of marriage July 15.

John O’Brien and the former Ethel Kinworthy were married in St. Louis July 15, 1950.

He is retired from International Shoe Company, where he worked for 40 years, and Ford Tool Steel, where he worked for eight years. She is retired from Concordia Publishing House, where she worked 34 years.

They are the parents of six children: Jim O’Brien, 69; Kathleen LoBello, 66; Peggy Lange, 63; Eileen Kehm, 63, Christine Faulkner, 58, all of St. Louis; and Sharon Ayres, 66, of Lexington, Kentucky. They have 17 grandchildren and 41 great-grandchildren.